Since disclosing massive global surveillance programs, the former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has been campaigning to strengthen privacy and the right of citizens to not be monitored by government agencies.
“Ultimately, saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. Or that you don’t care about freedom of the press because you don’t like to read. Or that you don’t care about freedom of religion because you don’t believe in God.”
Nothing to hide
Snowden published his memoir, Permanent Record, in 2019 as a means to convey his full story – including his upbringing and how he came to be the whistleblower we all now know.
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In this book, the former NSA contractor used several analogies in a chain to underline what the right to privacy actually means, as he saw it, and to stress that just because you aren’t using a particular right, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t apply.
He argued that various freedoms may not apply to you, or make sense today, but that they may have meaning for you or those you know in the future. Privacy, too, fell into this category, and he urged more and more people to defend their rights.
Nothing to fear
The legacy of Snowden, since he first helped journalists reveal the breadth and extent of government-led spying in 2013, is far-reaching. His revelations sent shockwaves throughout not only the intelligence-industrial complex but society at several levels.
For example, there’s been a dramatic surge in the use of software and applications in which end-to-end encryption can prevent communications data from being intercepted, either in a targeted or indiscriminate way.
Many of the practices he revealed were wound down thanks to the USA Freedom Act, while a US federal court ruled in 2020 that one of the NSA’s mass surveillance programs, in which bulk telephone data was collected, was done so illegally and possibly unconstitutionally.
His disclosures also fuelled data protection movements and new laws around the world, like GDPR in the EU.
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